Starting your own online shop is now easier than ever—what’s not so easy is making sure it gives you a good return on your investment. It’s important to remember that starting your own store is an investment, even when it’s an online store. The startup costs are much lower than starting a brick-and-mortar store, but you still must invest in products, web development, marketing, and more—including a lot of time. Here’s a quick guide on how to start an online store.
Decide on a niche market
Decide who you want to shop at your store, and consider that demographic’s needs and wants. Once you’ve decided on your target demographic and the price points you’re looking at, choose a product line. Find things you can purchase and sell with reasonable profit margins so that your business can get to a profitable point not too long into its life. Make sure you have access to enough stock, and come up with a plan to restock when the time comes.
Choose how you want to sell
Once you know what direction you’d like to take your store in, figure out how you’ll get your products out to the world. You have a few options when it comes to online store location. You can build your own website by hard-coding it yourself, hiring a web developer, or even using a premade online template service. You can also decide to simply act as a vendor on an already-popular selling website.
Be prepared for time and monetary commitment
Any store you open requires some level of investment. An online shop requires a large time commitment. You’ll need to monitor your site’s success, keep track of your product stock, ship out orders, handle reviews and customer relations, and much more just to keep your business afloat—especially in the beginning. It can take time for an online shop to become profitable, and it will get there much faster with a solid time commitment and a large enough investment in your product line.
Plan for shipping
Once you sell your first item, you need to get it to the purchaser! You’ll want to have a shipping provider and plan worked out prior to making your first sale. Using a third-party shipping company is often the right choice for a small business just starting out. They can negotiate shipping and even packaging prices for you to keep your costs low.
